As part of a collaboration with ESPN, Esquire.com's The Culture Blog will be previewing a new episode of the Worldwide Leader's award-winning news-magazine show, E:60, each week throughout the NFL season. On Tuesday night's episode (airing at 7 Eastern), Rachel Nichols meets with Giants receiver Victor Cruz, who is not only the best-dressed man in the NFL, but also, it turns out an excellent dancer. "Yes, this week you will see me salsa with Victor," Nichols told us on Monday. "But I don't think that people know the whole story behind that — he was on this incredible journey to the NFL, and just scoring that touchdown was the end of so many twists and turns of chaos." Herewith, more of that, in her own words. —Eds.

You can't predict the future, so you don't know what kind of receiver Victor Cruz will become. He had troubles in Week One against the Cowboys, but he obviously had a great game against the Buccaneers in Week Two. But the sense that you get from talking with him and hearing about the obstacles he's had to overcome in getting to the NFL — his academic issues when he was younger, his father's taking his own life, his grandmother's recent passing — is that despite all that, he's still got that strong upward trajectory as a player.

What I found refreshing, though, is that he's very matter-of-fact about his self-inflicting some of the obstacles. A great example is when he told me about his academic troubles: You know, I just really wasn't good at standardized tests and I really wasn't focused on academics in high school because the environment I was in didn't really force me to focus on that stuff. So when it came time to get the SAT scores he needed to go to UMass, he didn't have it at first — or the second or third times. It took him six or seven attempts before he finally figured it out.

Most kids would've just said, Eh, this isn't for me. Instead, Cruz said, I'm not good at this, but I need to figure out how to do it because I want to play football. And there were several other moments in his life where he also could've checked out: his failing to make the draft combine and his tearing his hamstring after making the Giants in 2010. That's something that comes across when you talk with him: Victor Cruz learned from his mistakes and he always pushes forward to get where he wants to go.

That's what was important to him — that he kept trying — and that's the lesson people should take from his story, because really, who keeps trying after six or seven times?